The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

234 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
member of a minority party, being a senator was nothing like being a
governor. In public life, “not much beats the opportunity a governor has
to be in control of the agenda,” he said almost wistfully. “You may not
control the decision, but you control the agenda.” Alan Simpson observed,
“Dan has an engineering mind. It’s precision and it’s putting link on link
on girder on girder, and in this place the sand comes along every four
days and washes out the foundation.” 10
The sulfurous debate over Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork, a divisive
conservative, to the U.S. Supreme Court, was one of the last straws
for Evans. During a three-day swing around the state, reporters asked if
his re-election campaign was officially under way. Evans said he was still
waiting “for that bolt of lightning from above.” It arrived without thunder
around midnight on October 20, 1987, more like a germinated epiphany
than a bright flash. Evans told his wife he’d had enough and announced
his decision before the day was out at a packed news conference. In an eloquent
essay for The New York Times Magazine, Evans summed up his
feelings:
I came to Washington with a slightly romantic notion of the Senate—perhaps
natural for a former governor and civil engineer whose hobby is the
study of history—and I looked forward to the duel of debate, the exchange
of ideas. What I found was a legislative body that had lost its focus and was
in danger of losing its soul. In the United States Senate, debate has come
to consist of set speeches read before a largely empty chamber; and in
committees, quorums are rarely achieved. I have lived though five years
of bickering and protracted paralysis. Five years is enough. I just can’t
face another six years of frustrating gridlock. . . .
Consider the filibuster—speaking at length to delay and defeat a bill.
This legislative tactic has an honorable past, but recently its use has
grown like a malignant tumor. . . . Now merely a “hold,” or threat of filibuster,
placed by a senator is sufficient to kill a bill. Senator Jesse A.
Helms’s bitter feud with the State Department provides a classic example
of this. The Republican from North Carolina has shown himself particularly
adept at using the rules to further his own foreign policy agenda. . . .
Only rarely is the Senate willing to go through the pain and time necessary
to stop this bullying. The dramatic decline in discipline helped to
stretch out legislative sessions interminably, and thus eliminated the extended
periods of time that legislators used to spend among their constituents.
Most of us have been forced to become only Tuesday-through-
Thursday senators, squeezing in brief weekend visits to avoid feeling like
exiles from our own home states. 11